Terms of Service
Updated: June 19, 2024
Updated: June 19, 2024
Before using our product or services, Laterpress, Inc. (“we”, “us”, “our”, “Company”, “the Company”, “Laterpress”) requires you to read and agree to the following Terms. These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your use of and access to the Company’s products and services. The Terms refer, collectively, to everything on this webpage and in our Privacy Policy.
You should review these Terms periodically as we may update them from time to time:
BY ACCESSING OR USING THE PRODUCT OR SERVICES IN ANY WAY, YOU AGREE THAT YOU, YOUR AGENTS, AND ENDUSERS ARE BOUND BY THESE TERMS. THESE TERMS INCLUDE AN ARBITRATION AGREEMENT, WAIVER OF CLASS-ACTION RIGHTS, AND LIABILITY LIMITATIONS.
YOU MAY NOT ACCESS OR USE LATEPRESS IF: (I) YOU CHOOSE NOT TO AGREE TO THE TERMS, (II) YOU ARE UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE BUT 16 YEARS OLD OR OVER (UNLESS YOU HAVE RECEIVED YOUR PARENT OR GUARDIAN’S PERMISSION TO USE LATERPRESS AND YOUR PARENT OR GUARDIAN HAS AGREED TO THESE TERMS ON YOUR BEHALF), (III) YOU ARE UNDER 16 YEARS OLD, (IV) YOU DO NOT HAVE THE FULL POWER AND AUTHORITY TO ENTER INTO AND FOLLOW THESE TERMS, OR (V) YOUR AGREEMENT TO AND FOLLOWING OF THESE TERMS DOES OR WILL BREACH OR CONFLICT WITH ANY OTHER AGREEMENT OR ARRANGEMENT YOU HAVE WITH SOMEONE ELSE OR OTHERWISE VIOLATES THE LAW.
We reserve the right to revise these Terms. Changes to these Terms are effective upon posting on our website. After such posting, your continued use of the Company’s product or services constitutes your acceptance of those change.
You may have to create an account to use certain Laterpress products and services. The information you provide when you create that account must be accurate and kept up-to-date. You cannot use your account to impersonate another individual and doing so may, in Latepress’s sole discretion, lead to the suspension or termination of your account.
Your content: You own your content. Distributing content you own using Laterpress doesn’t change that. When you distribute content on Laterpress, you only give us the limited rights we need to perform our services to you -- a nonexclusive license to store, display, and make your content available based on the configuration you've selected. For example, you may set up your stories to be freely available, available only for payment, or to have a free preview followed by paid content, and we would render your content based only on that configuration. Additionally, if you agree to Laterpress’s “Author Community” functionality (coming soon!), you grant us the right to promote your Laterpress content in a manner related to generating more readers of and views for your content (e.g. via displaying your book’s thumbnail on dynamically-generated “Recommended” or “Also Purchased” lists). You can remove your content from Laterpress at any time simply by deleting it from Laterpress.
Our rights in our creations: We own what we’ve created. We only grant you the right to use our company name and logo to promote what you distribute on Laterpress. You need our express written consent to use our brand name or logo in any other way (e.g. to use, reproduce, distribute, display, create derivative works of our creations) or to use any of our other creations at all. Our creations are protected under the law, including intellectual property laws, and include (but are not limited to) our website, brand, logo, name, content, and code.
Any activity on your account or when you are otherwise accessing Laterpress is your responsibility. Notify Laterpress immediately if you suspect that your account has been breached, hacked, or otherwise compromised. If you share your login information with another individual, they could gain access to and control of your account and Laterpress may not be able to identify whose account it is.
You agree not to post any content or otherwise use Laterpress to harm or disrupt us, our products or services, or other people or organizations. The following are examples of what you are prohibited from using Laterpress for:
If you want to report a security vulnerability, first off: thank you so much! Please contact us directly at protect@laterpress.com and include the subject line “Reporting a security vulnerability”. Full disclosure: We are a small business and do not provide bug bounties at this time.
At Laterpress, we’re trying to build a different kind of direct publishing platform – one powered and led by its users.
Part of doing that means that we want future versions of our content guidelines and removal policies to be written, maintained, and enforced by our community of authors. If you are interested in helping make that vision a reality, we encourage you to apply to join our Author Working Group, which is currently in beta.
For now, though, we require that any content you post on Laterpress comply with the content guidelines that we, alas, wrote ourselves. We also reserve the right to, in our sole discretion, remove content from Laterpress at any time for any reason.
Finally, just because we allow content to be distributed on Laterpress does not mean we endorse or support it. Our content guidelines permit the publication of content we may object to or think is wrong or in poor taste. But we also know that we are not emperors or infallible, and that’s why our content guidelines err on the side of less censorship and letting more voices be heard.
All content you distribute on Laterpress is subject to the following restrictions:
We strictly prohibit violating the intellectual property of others and reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to remove content, suspend or ban users, or otherwise take actions we think are appropriate when we suspect content may be infringing. If you believe that content on Laterpress violates your intellectual property, please submit your Digital Millennium Copyright Act Complaints to our designated DMCA agent by emailing copyright@laterpress.com.
We also strictly prohibit frivolous takedown requests and want to make it clear that there may be legal consequences for sending a false or frivolous takedown notice. Before sending a takedown request, you must consider legal uses such as fair use and licensed uses. We encourage our users to file counter-notifications when they believe a DMCA takedown demand is improper. For information on how to respond to improper demands, consult the Chilling Effects (https://www.chillingeffects.org/) website.
When we suspect content from Laterpress has been illegally indexed, compiled, or scraped, you authorize us to act on your behalf to send DMCA takedown notices or similar requests to third parties to remove such content.
The person or organization who distributed or originated content on Laterpress bears sole responsibility for such content. You access that content at your own risk. We have no liability related to such content, including any liability for errors, omissions, accuracy, reliability, or completeness of the content. You agree that content distributed on Laterpress may be offensive, misleading, deceptive, harmful, or otherwise inappropriate. Such content may also contain links to third-party websites, products, or services. Laterpress has no control over or responsibility for such third-party websites, products, and services, and you release and hold Laterpress harmless from all related liability.
You release Laterpress from all liability related to disputes between users (e.g. over payment refunds) or between users and any third party. Laterpress has no obligation to intervene in such disputes.
Laterpress does NOT charge any fees when you receive direct payments from readers (defined as payments not resulting from optional Author Community features). However, all payments on Laterpress are subject to a payment processsor fees charged by Stripe, the third-party payment processor we integrate with.
Those fees are typically around 2.9% to 3.4% plus a 30 cent transaction fee but may vary depending on your location and changes Stripe makes to its offerings. Laterpress has no control over these payment processing fees.
You are solely responsible for all taxes, duties, tariffs, and similar fees or assessments (e.g. sales and use taxes) you may owe in any jurisdiction.
Fees paid to Laterpress (including but not limited to any Laterpress AI prepaid credits) are non-refundable. Laterpress reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to make exceptions to this policy. Please refer to Stripe’s terms of service for its refund policy.
When you distribute content and collect payments via Laterpress, you are solely responsible for determining your own refund policy and for any obligations you may have to readers who purchased or subscribed to your content.
Only where we suspect an author has engaged in illegal activity (e.g. fraud or copyright violations) may Laterpress initiate refunds from authors to readers.
While we try to keep Laterpress safe, secure, and well functioning, using Laterpress exposes you to some risks. The Company is not responsible for any harm you may experience. Furthermore:
THE LATERPRESS PRODUCTS AND SERVICES, AND ALL MATERIALS, CONTENT, AND PRODUCTS INCLUDED IN OR MADE AVAILABLE IN CONNECTION THEREWITH, ARE PROVIDED “AS IS,” WITH NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WHATSOEVER. LATERPRESS AND ITS LICENSORS EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS OF MERCHANTABILITY, LATENT DEFECTS, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NONINFRINGEMENT, AND QUIET ENJOYMENT.
THE COMPANY DOES NOT REPRESENT OR WARRANT THAT LATERPRESS OR ITS USE WILL: (I) BE UNINTERRUPTED OR SECURE, (II) BE FREE OF DEFECTS, INACCURACIES, OR ERRORS, OR OTHERWISE CURRENT OR COMPLETE, (III) MEET USER OR ENDUSER REQUIREMENTS, (IV) OPERATE IN THE CONFIGURATION OR WITH OTHER HARDWARE OR SOFTWARE USERS OR ENDUSERS USE OR THIRD PARTY WEBSITES OR APPLICATIONS, OR (V) BE FREE OF VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS.
YOU AGREE THAT YOUR USE OF LATERPRESS WILL BE AT YOUR SOLE RISK AND THAT YOU WILL BE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE THAT RESULTS FROM YOUR USE OF LATERPRESS.
The Company’s liability for any damages you or a third party may incur is limited as follows:
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COMPANY, ITS MEMBERS, AFFILIATES, DIRECTORS, ASSOCIATES, PARTNERS, AGENTS, EMPLOYEES, OR REPRESENTATIVES BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, EXEMPLARY, PUNITIVE, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES WHATSOEVER (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF PROFITS, LOSS OF DATA, LOSS OF GOODWILL, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, PERSONAL INJURY, LOSS OF PRIVACY, OR ATTORNEYS’ FEES), ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY RELATED TO LATERPRESS, REGARDLESS OF THE CAUSE OF ACTION ON WHICH THEY ARE BASED, EVEN IF THE COMPANY OR SUCH OTHER PERSONS OR ENTITIES HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
IN NO EVENT WILL THE CUMULATIVE, AGGREGATE LIABILITY OF THE COMPANY IN CONNECTION WITH OUR PRODUCTS OR SERVICES EXCEED $100 OR THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID TO THE COMPANY IN CONNECTION WITH THE PARTICULAR PRODUCT OR SERVICE AT ISSUE, WHICHEVER IS GREATER.
YOU MAY HAVE OTHER RIGHTS WHICH MAY VARY FROM STATE TO STATE OR IN OTHER JURISDICTIONS OR COUNTRIES. BECAUSE SOME STATES OR JURISDICTIONS MAY NOT ALLOW LIMITATIONS ON THE DURATION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES, OR LIMITATIONS ON OR EXCLUSIONS OF CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, SOME OF THE ABOVE LIMITATIONS MAY NOT APPLY TO A USER OR ENDUSER DEPENDING ON HER, HIS, OR THEIR STATE OR NATION OF RESIDENCE.
To the extent permitted by law, you will indemnify, defend, and hold Laterpress, its officers, directors, employees, affiliates, subcontractors, and assigns harmless from and against any loss, claim, liability, damage, action, or cause of action (including reasonable attorneys' fees) that arises from any breach of your representations, warranties, or obligations set forth in this Agreement. We will be entitled, at our expense, to participate in the defense and settlement of the claim or action with counsel of our own choosing.
The Company may terminate or modify our products and services at any time. The Company may, in its sole discretion and without any liability, modify, suspend, or discontinue any aspect of our products and services, temporarily or permanently, at any time. We may deny you access to all or part of Laterpress at any time for any reason or no reason at all. If we terminate your use of Laterpress, you must cease all use of Laterpress immediately. These Terms will survive indefinitely unless and until the Company chooses to terminate them.
If you have any dispute with us, you agree that before taking any formal action, you will contact us at hello@laterpress.com, provide a brief, written description of the dispute, and your contact information and allow sixty days to pass, during which we will attempt to reach an amicable settlement of any issue. Disputes are further limited by the following: These Terms, your use of Laterpress, and any other matter relating to the Company will be governed by the laws of the state of New York, without regard to conflict of laws principles. These Terms and each of its parts evidence a transaction involving interstate commerce, and the United States Arbitration Act applies in all cases and governs the interpretation and enforcement of the arbitration rules and arbitration proceedings. Any claims arising out of, relating to, or connected with these Terms must be asserted individually in binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (“AAA”) in accordance with its Commercial Arbitration Terms and the AAA Supplementary Procedures for Consumer Related Disputes (including, without limitation, utilizing desk, phone or video conference proceedings where appropriate and permitted to mitigate costs of travel) in New York, New York. The arbitrator shall not conduct any form of class or collective arbitration nor join or consolidate claims by or for individuals. The Arbitrator, and not any federal, state, or local court or agency, will have exclusive authority to resolve any dispute relating to the interpretation, applicability, enforceability or formation of these Terms, including but not limited to any claim that all or any part of these Terms is void or voidable or a particular claim is subject to arbitration. Judgment on the award rendered by the Arbitrator may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction. There are only two exceptions to this arbitration agreement:
First, if we reasonably believe that you have in any manner violated or threatened to violate these Terms, we may seek injunctive or other appropriate relief in any court of competent jurisdiction.
Second, any claim of $5,000 or less may, at the option of the claiming party, be resolved in small claims court in New York, New York if the claim and the parties are within the jurisdiction of the small claims court.
BY AGREEING TO THESE TERMS, YOU HEREBY IRREVOCABLY WAIVE ANY RIGHT YOU MAY HAVE TO A COURT TRIAL (OTHER THAN SMALL CLAIMS COURT AS PROVIDED ABOVE) OR TO SERVE AS A REPRESENTATIVE, AS A PRIVATE ATTORNEY GENERAL, OR IN ANY OTHER REPRESENTATIVE CAPACITY, OR TO PARTICIPATE AS A MEMBER OF A CLASS OF CLAIMANTS, IN ANY LAWSUIT, ARBITRATION, OR OTHER PROCEEDING FILED AGAINST US AND/OR RELATED THIRD PARTIES.
REGARDLESS OF ANY STATUTE OR LAW TO THE CONTRARY, ANY CLAIM OR CAUSE OF ACTION ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO USE OF THE WEBSITE, SERVICE, PRODUCT, OR THE TERMS MUST BE FILED WITHIN ONE YEAR AFTER SUCH CLAIM OR CAUSE OF ACTION ARISES OR IT WILL BE FOREVER BARRED.
Entire agreement: These Terms (which incorporate our Privacy Policy) make up the entire agreement between the parties regarding the Company and supersedes any prior agreements.
No joint venture, partnership, or employment: You are not an employee or partner of Laterpress, not a joint venturer with Laterpress.
Events beyond control: Under no circumstances will the Company or its licensors be held liable for any delay or failure in performance resulting directly or indirectly from an event beyond the Company’s reasonable control.
Changes to terms: Laterpress reserves the right, in our sole discretion, to make changes to these terms. If we make material changes that adversely affect your rights, we will email you or post information about the changes on Laterpress before the changes come into effect. By continuing to use Laterpress after a change, you agree to the new terms.
Laterpress controlled from USA: Laterpress’s products and services are controlled and offered by the Company from the United States of America. Unless provided elsewhere, the Company makes no representation that Laterpress may be used in or complies with the laws of other locations. Use from other locations is at your own risk. You consent to processing in the United States of America of the data you provide.
Emails to you: If you provide us with your email address, you agree that we may send you emails related to the Service or your account. If you do not want to receive promotional emails related to the Service, you can opt out by following the instructions in our messages. You may not opt out of emails relating to the administration of any Laterpress service or product you request. We will communicate with you by email or by posting notices on the website. You agree that all agreements, notices, disclosures, and other communications that we provide to you electronically satisfy any legal requirement that such communications be in writing. If you have a legal requirement to communicate with or give notice to us, you must email them to legal@laterpress.com and include the phrase “Legal Notice” in the subject line.
Assignment: You may not assign, delegate, or transfer your agreement to these terms, your rights or obligations thereunder, or your account without the express written consent of Laterpress; Laterpress may assign, delegate, and transfer this agreement and all rights and obligations hereunder without your consent.
Severability: If part of these terms are invalid or unenforceable, such invalidation or unenforceability will be restricted to the minimum extent necessary. Other parts of this agreement will also remain in effect.
Waiver: If Laterpress does not enforce a right under these terms, that does not mean we have waived that right.
Survival: Any terms related to ownership, payment obligations, limitations of liability, arbitration, indemnification, disclaimers, assignment, entire agreement, waiver, severability, and joint venture shall survive even after your agreement with Laterpress is terminated.
You acknowledge that you have read, understood, and are bound by these Terms, as well as by the Privacy Policy of the Company. If you have any questions about this agreement, please email us at legal@laterpress.com.
Laterpress offers optional Author Community Features. In addition to Laterpress's general Terms of Service, the terms of this section apply to your access and use of any Author Community Features.
Author Community Features are features designed to recommend your stories to readers across the Laterpress platform or via affiliate programs (for example, Recommended Sections, Top Lists, and Affiliate Links).
By default, these are enabled for your account but they are completely optional. To turn them off, just go to the Settings page of your author dashboard and toggle off Author Community Features. Use of these features involve a fee. To learn more about fees, go to the "Standard Fees" and "Author Community Fees" section below.
In addition to our Content Guidelines, which govern the minimum standards for publishing direct via Laterpress, Laterpress may apply extra guidelines, rules, and/or algorithms to decide whether and how to recommend stories via our Author Community Features.
As with our Content Guidelines, we want future versions of our Author Community Features' guidelines, rules, and algorithms to be subject to feedback and improvement by our community of authors. For now, though, we reserve the right to, in our sole discretion, update these guidelines, rules, and algorithms at any time for any reason.
Books purchased as a result of Author Community features are subject to a 15% fee in addition to Stripe's payment processing fees. This applies even if the customer has purchased from you before. 10% goes to Laterpress and 5% goes to the user who generated the referral (e.g. through that author's Recommended section or an affiliate link), if any.
If no user recommended the book but the purchase was attributable to Author Community Features (e.g. Laterpress recommends your book via a centralized Top Reads page), the fee is only 10% and goes entirely to Laterpress. Similarly, if at the time of the reader payment, the referring user does not have Author Community Features enabled and a Stripe account connected, the referral fee is only 10% and goes entirely to Laterpress.
Note that if a subscription is attributable to Author Community Features, the referral fee applies to the initial subscription payment and renewals.
Laterpress offers optional AI features that authors can use for brainstorming, plotting, drafting, and editing. In addition to Laterpress's general Terms of Service, the terms of this section apply to your access and use of any Laterpress AI features. Laterpress AI features are any features that utilize AI models trained by machine learning and that are identified as part of our Laterpress AI feature set on our website and/or in our user help resources.
You must opt into Laterpress AI features. Even when you create an account on Laterpress, you are not opted into Laterpress AI features. Users must take an additional step and explicitly opt into these features and these terms. For example, today you can do this by navigating to the Laterpress AI tab in your account and clicking to agree to these Laterpress AI terms.
We do not train models on your data or let third parties do so. Laterpress AI does not use your Content (including your inputs into and generated outputs from AI models) to train AI models, nor do we provide or license your Content to third parties to train AI models. By using Laterpress AI, you do NOT grant us a license to use your Content in such ways either.
While we have no plans to do so at this time, if we ever wanted to use your Content to improve AI models, we would only do so if a user explicitly opted into helping us improve AI models (for example, we would show a modal giving a user an option to select "Yes" or "No" to participate). Further, we would never default users into participating in such a program.
Responsibility over AI inputs and outputs. You may provide content as inputs to be processed by Laterpress AI, as well as receive outputs from Laterpress AI. These inputs and outputs are considered your Content. You are solely responsible for the development, content, operation, maintenance, and use of your Content. Like any Content you utilize in connection with Laterpress, you must ensure that such Content does not violate our Terms of Service, including but not limited to provisions related to our content guidelines, Intellectual Property, and impermissible uses. Additionally, you may not use Laterpress AI in a way the violates the terms of our third party AI providers.
Terms and policies of third party AI providers apply. Laterpress AI uses third party AI providers -- currently, Anthropic and OpenAI. Depending on the model used by a Laterpress AI feature, your usage of Laterpress AI is subject to the terms and policies of the applicable third party AI provider. For more details on these terms and policies, please refer to the websites of Anthropic (terms and usage policy) and OpenAI (terms and policies).
Uptime and quality. We make no guarantees as to the uptime of Laterpress AI or the quality or usefulness of its outputs. The service may be subject to disruption, throttling, and/or downtime, whether due to Laterpress and/or our third party AI providers.
Payment and token usage. To use Laterpress AI, users do not need a subscription. User simply must add credits to their Laterpress AI balance. When Laterpress AI features are used, credits will be subtracted from this balance based on fees charged by our third party AI providers plus a transaction fee charged by Laterpress (10%).
We periodically review each of our AI providers websites to calculate the fees they charge us but our calculations may occasionally be out of date (for example, an AI provider may decrease the fees they charge for a particular model and it may take us a few weeks to incorporate such changes).
For the avoidance of doubt, here are the current rates we are basing our Laterpress AI fees on:
OpenAI - For more details, please see their website.
Anthropic - For more details, please see their website.
Token calculations and input processing. Each third party AI provider calculates tokens differently but roughly speaking a single token is equivalent to roughly 3/4th of an English word and AI providers charge based on the total number of tokens inputted and outputted. Laterpress reserves the right to process your inputs in a way that may add to or subtract from the number of tokens sent to the third party AI provider.
WARRANTY DISCLAIMER. LATERPRESS AI DOES NOT MAKE ANY WARRANTY AS TO THE OUTPUTS GENERATED BY LATERPRESS AI OR THE CORRECTNESS, ACCURACY, OR USEFULNESS OF SUCH OUTPUTS. YOU UNDERSTAND, ACKNOWLEDGE, AND AGREE THAT ANY OUTPUTS GENERATED VIA LATERPRESS AI IS DONE AT YOUR SOLE RISK. AI MODELS CAN AND WILL GENERATE OUTPUT THAT APPEAR ACCURATE BUT ARE HALLUCINATED, INACCURATE, AND/OR OUT OF DATE. NO INFORMATION OR ADVICE, WHETHER ORAL OR WRITTEN, OUTPUTTED BY LATERPRESS AI SHALL CREATE ANY WARRANTY OR AGREEMENT NOT EXPRESSLY MADE HEREIN.
You acknowledge that you have read, understood, and are bound by these Optional Product Terms, as well as by the general Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy of the Company. If you have any questions about this agreement, please email us at legal@laterpress.com.